We brought home our pup last week and he had his first vaccine today. Our breeder, who I think is fabulous, gave him raw chicken and thats what we have continued. Being primarily vegetarian (I started cooking chicken for the children just 2 months ago), we find the smell and just the feel of it a little difficult but to be honest, if that is what is good for the dog, we want to try and give him that. The problem is that our vet was vehemently against raw and suggested kibble saying raw was the latest fad and there is a lot of contamination in feeding raw. We give Natural Instinct. We are definitely going to stick with raw atleast until he is fully toilet trained and ofcourse a little older to avoid tummy upsets. But please could someone tell me if Raw is a fad - is there a very good quality dry food in the market that can compare with raw? I think I will find it difficult to give anything other than chicken since we are not used to it. Maybe Turkey would be ok too.

Any advice on the optimal food for the pup would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Vaish, We are recent converts to raw and would not go back to kibble. Our Dude is 3 and we had no end of tummy upsets on a range of kibbles and wet foods. I can wholeheartedly recommend Luna and Me , their raw patties are fabulous( not messy, not yukky at all) They do Chicken, turkey, beef and lamb. They have a great delivery service and you can order small quantities. Our vet said raw is a fad too, I beg to differ. Good luck, Anny and Dude x

Hi. We have fed Stout raw since he was 9 months, we have recently swapped from natural instinct to luna and me. The luna and me is far less smelly they also do patties which may get round the texture issue. Stout has inflammatory bowel disease, we have had vets who are dismissive of raw. Stout was very ill a couple of years ago and we had vets telling us there is no way he could get a balanced diet on raw and instead a much better food would be one where the protein came from birds feathers! For whatever reason stout cannot tolerate dry food even if the ingredients are the same as in his raw food so kibble is out of the question for us. I would say whichever route you choose there are websites where you can compare foods and go for the best you can afford that suits your puppy!

My friend has moved his dog raw due to problems with chewing and itching. I told him about my experience with Canagan and he's currently trying his dog on the free range chicken version so far, the results are looking positive. I've tried a number of different dry foods for my puppy, including Royal Canin, Millies Wolfheart and JamesWellbeloved. I found Canagan to be the best option for my puppy. Check out allaboutdogfood website for reviews and details of different dog foods.

Thank you everyone ever so much for your help. I may give Luna and me a go. At the moment he is on Natural Instinct Puppy chicken. Is there a difference between two raw companies, and should I change over gradually?

I also found out something called Butternut Box. They are a Hello Fresh version for dogs. Has anyone heard of them?[

I was given excellent advice over the phone by Sammy at Luna+Me. She is incredibly knowledgable and helpful ( it's her company) You could have a chat with her. We changed Dude over straight away, not gradually, and we had no problems at all. This was incredible in view of the previous problems we had had with other types of food. Anny

We also changed Stout straight over. I would just say re Luna and Me, I placed an order over a week ago that still hasn't turned up, I have just phoned to say they had run out (would have been nice to have been told, my emails have been ignored) so I wont get Stouts food until Tuesday (sadly he runs out of food on Saturday, so we are going to have to try to track some down over the weekend), so if you do swap make sure you order before you get down to the final few and chase up any orders!

Mine have been fed raw for over 7 years now, and there were plenty before me so it's a pretty on-going fad! I don't use completes, I mix my own. I've been a veggie for 40 years, but that is my choice, and it definitely wouldn't be the choice of my doodles! Feeding them raw food means I know exactly what they are having, and I know that it is good quality food that they are designed to eat, that keeps them fit and healthy, and that they love.

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